Midnight's Gift
by aryssamonster
Summary: It's been nearly a year since the events of Blue Noon. Jessica is still in the blue time, Rex is still part Darkling. But Rex finds something in Madeline's house one day, and the Midnighters learn to believe in the power of change.
1. Chapter 1

**I decided that there were _definitely _not enough Midnighters stories. So I broke my decision to forget fanfictions for awhile, and wrote this! And no, this isn't a one-shot.

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It had been a nearly a year since that Halloween. Nearly a year since Jessica had been trapped in the secret hour; since she, Melissa, and Jonathan had taken their road trip. Everything had changed drastically since that day.

The Day family had never moved. They never really quit hoping that Jessica would suddenly reappear, just as she had disappeared so long ago. Beth helped the Midnighters that had remained in Bixby as much as she could. She recorded all that Rex researched, just in case they may be able to put it into use and rescue her sister.

Rex had continued caring for his father and Maddy. He knew that there was nothing he could do for his father beyond giving him the pills he needed, and keeping him from wandering about. Maddy was an entirely different story. She was recovering more and more every day, to the point where Rex needed only check up on her every few days. After nearly a year, she was her old self again. Nearly, at least. Her prideful, arrogant demeanor never quite recovered from having Rex's darkling half invade her, though her mind had. She was nowhere near ready to try touching Rex again.

This was something that Rex was semi-patiently waiting out. He hoped that she would overcome the fear eventually. The old woman had boasted many times that she knew how to separate his human half from the darkling half. And as much as Rex loved being half monster, he was anxious to become fully human again.

_Maybe if I'm fully human_, he thought often_, Melissa will come back…_

He missed her fiercely, as she did for him. They had tried to communicate over the last year, but had hit a few…road blocks. Rex's darkling half was still sensitive to human letters and technology, so that ruled out computers, telephones, and writing to each other. Melissa and Jonathan would call Dess as often as they could manage and have her pass messages on to Rex.

Dess had immersed herself in drawing up new maps of the blue time. She had given Geostationary to Jonathan when they left the previous year. Whenever he called, he would give her the numbers of places they had found that had the blue time, and she would plot them on her map. She was amazed at the ever-growing Blue Sites, as she called them.

Jessica had become a bit depressed, existing only one hour a day. While her friends aged and matured over the year, she had barely lived two weeks. She wanted more than anything to escape her blue prison, to walk in the sunlight with Jonathan, to live a normal teenage life…as normal as it could be while being a Midnighter, at least. From what she heard, Rex and her sister were trying their hardest to find a way to rescue her, though she wasn't as encouraged by this as she should have been. Rex was sure to be focused on his own problems, and Beth was no Midnighter. Jess was afraid she might never escape. That she would be forced to live where darklings may one day dwell again as she watched her friends and boyfriend grow old and die. It was hardly an optimistic thought.

But throughout all of the various problems that they had, life went on. Maybe it wasn't as it always had been, but it continued on the semi-normal path that the Midnighters had become used to. Being able to live an extra hour a day, saving hundreds of thousands of lives by sticking a hand in lightning, fighting the true definition of a nightmare…the strangeness of everything they'd gone through had trained them to expect the unexpected. Nothing was bound by the realms of reality for them. And as the rip in the secret hour had shown, things were susceptible to change.

Maybe this was why they still held out hope. Hope that Jess could be saved from a partial existence or that Rex could become fully human again. Hope was what kept them all going, despite the true horror of what. Hope, and the knowledge that things could change in an instant.


	2. NOTE!

Uh...Hi guys. 'Tis Lyz, here to explain why I haven't updated...at all.

This story is a lot harder then I expected it to be, and as I have two stories already going that I need to finish, this story is going on haitus for...a month, maybe? I promise, promise, _promise_ you that I won't abandon it. (I like it too much to abandon it.)

I'm going to re-read the last book, try to remember where I was going with this, and write at least two more chapters before I update again. Thanks to all of my reviewers. I didn't really expect this to get such an awesome welcome.

I'll pick the story up again during the summer. If I don't have this updated by the second weekend of June, please swamp me with PMs and comments telling me to get my butt on the computer and WRITE!

Thanks,

x3 Lyz


	3. Chapter 2: FINALLY

**I'm sorry it took me a week longer then I said it would for me to update. But I finally finished the chapter _and _have a plotline for the rest of the story. Now that _The Inevitable _winding down, I have more time to work on this. So hopefully I'll be able to update more frequently. I know this chapter is a little...shorter, but this was the best I could do without giving too much away.**

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Rex sat in Madeline's house while she slept, once more sorting through the lore. They had found another stack of papers and books, all in more disrepair than the others had been. Beth sat next to him. She had a pen poised over a pad of paper, ready to record anything interesting Rex might come across.

"Anything?" she asked for the eighth time in twenty minutes.

"Shh," Rex hissed.

Beth rolled her eyes. Watching Rex read the lore was boring. Always had been and probably always would be, since he never found anything helpful. Every once and awhile he would try to engage her in a conversation over some other dull aspect of being a Seer, but she figured he was just trying to show off how much he knew that she didn't. He knew full well that she was only there in case they could find a way to rescue her sister.

'_Maybe he just likes having an assistant_,' she thought glumly, '_Maybe he really has found something but didn't tell me because he wants me to keep working for him._'

But she brushed these thoughts away and began to doodle on the paper pad she held. It was ten more long minutes before Rex's head suddenly shot up out of his handful of papers.

"What?" cried Beth, "Did you find something? Did you!?"

"It's something I've never seen before, but I-" he stopped and looked at what Beth had drawn, "The Firebringer symbol. Nice work."

Beth's eyes flicked from Rex to her drawing of Jessica's lore symbol and back to Rex again. A look of irritation crossed her face.

"Can you just tell me what you found?"

Rex raised an eyebrow at her. '_Oops_,' she thought, '_Maybe that wasn't the best idea…_' She had learned quickly that angering Rex meant angering his darkling side. And angering a darkling wasn't the smartest thing a person could do. Even Beth, a non-Midnighter, knew that.

"I don't want to tell you what I know until I know that I know it for sure," he told her. Beth frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. She was glaring at Rex with all the little-sisterly power she possessed. Rex shrugged.

"I don't want to get your hopes up if it isn't something that could save Jessica," he explained.

It made sense. And that was enough to get Beth even more irritated. Beth knew that he was right, and that just made everything worse. She slumped back into her previous position and began to draw again.

Rex's eyes scanned the page, taking in everything that he read. There was a way to save Jessica. There was evidence in the one page to tell him that much. But there wasn't enough. The bottom of the page had been ripped in a jagged line.

Frustrated, he ran a hand through his hair.

"Beth," he said softly. Beth's eyes darted up to his face. Rex sighed. "We have a lot of work to do."


	4. Chapter 3

**WOO! I finally updated! Yay me :) This is the longest chapter I've written so far!!!  
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"3…2…1…" Melissa counted down the seconds on her watch. There was the familiar jolting sensation, and suddenly the world was once more basked in soft blue light.

"Hey guys."

Melissa and Jonathan turned to look in the backseat of Melissa's car. A familiar redhead, wearing an equally familiar tired expression, smiled at them.

"Hey Jess," Jonathan leaned back and kissed his girlfriend sweetly. Melissa made a fake gagging face, just as she did ever time they found midnight. She didn't honestly know why she did that anymore. She was used to the couple kissing. Whether she made fun of them just to annoy them, or to create a sense of something…solid; something that wasn't liable to change, she didn't know. All she knew was that she did it anyway, and it always got the same reactions from Jess and Jonathan.

The pair separated and rolled their eyes at her.

"What are you, three? Grow up Melissa," Jonathan teased.

"Oh yeah, like making out in the back of my car is mature," Melissa smirked.

"Come on guys," Jessica stuck her tongue out at her friends. "I only have an hour. Fill me in. Where are we tonight?"

" Los Angeles," Jonathan said in a Spanish accent, drawing out the S in Angeles.

"Like, by the beach?" Jess asked curiously.

"Look out the window," Melissa pointed.

Jessica looked out, and gasped. The Pacific Ocean was _right there_, frozen in the mystery of the blue time. She jumped out of the car and ran towards the water, awestruck by how it was frozen in the blue glow of the midnight hour. She ran a hand through the smallest wave and watched it crash onto the sand.

"Neat trick," she heard an unfamiliar voice say from behind her. "What are you? Some kind of...like, mutant psychic or something?"

Jessica whirled around. Jonathan and Melissa were far up the beach, up by Melissa's truck. They were so engrossed in a conversation about...something...that Jessica doubted that they knew about the new person who had joined them.

He was shorter then she was; thirteen or fourteen from the looks of him. A skinny kid, he had wavy brown hair and blue eyes that seemed to glow brightly in the same colored hue that was cast around them.

"Um...no," Jessica ran a hand through her bright red hair. "I'm a flame-bringer..."

"A _what_?" the boy looked incredulous. "Did you just make that up? I've never heard of a...fire blower or whatever the heck you say you are."

Jessica crossed her arms across her chest and raised an eyebrow.

"_Flame-bringer_,and no, I did _not _make that up, thank-you-very-much. What're you? A loudmouth? Bet ya never heard of that one either." The boy rolled his eyes.

"Yeah. Never been called that one before. But what're you doing here? I've never seen you guys around." He nodded his head towards Melissa and Jonathan. "This? This is my beach. _My _time."

"Oh, right...Midnight _belongs _to you," Jessica nodded sarcastically. She didn't like this boy, Midnighter or otherwise. "Sorry to tell you but we've been doing this a lot longer then you have."

Well, at least Melissa, Dess, Rex, and Jonathan had. They had always lived in Bixby. They'd known about the blue time for their whole lives. But Jessica could pretend that she was included in the 'we', if just for the sake of shutting the kid up. And it sort of worked. Maybe he realized that he just wanted answers; maybe he was just curious. Either way, he visibly relaxed a little.

"The name's Daniel Adams. Who're you?"

"Jessica Day."

Daniel snorted with laughter. Jessica rolled her eyes.

"What?"

"Day...when you can see midnight. Jessica _Day_. But it's not day. Get it?" he laughed harder, shaking his head.

"O-kay. That was lame," Jessica muttered. She turned her head towards where Melissa and Jonathan had stood. But they weren't there.

"Boo." Jessica jumped and spun around. Both of the other Midnighters stood behind her; Jonathan laughing and Melissa rolling her eyes.

"That's so not fair for you to use your acrobat powers against me!" Jessica cried.

"All's fair in love." Jonathan shrugged.

"Don't you mean love and war?" Daniel asked.

"Nope," Jonathan grinned and put his arms around Jessica's waist. "Never war for us."

"Except against those darklings," Melissa broke in. "Forgot so soon?"

"What the heck is a darkling?" Daniel frowned.

Melissa, Jonathan, and Jessica exchanged glances. This Daniel kid was really out of the loop.

"First off, what are you?" Melissa asked bluntly. "Mindcaster, seer, polymath, acrobat?"

"Um...well, I call myself a Chemist," Daniel said, looking a bit taken aback by what Melissa had just said.

"And why's that?" Jonathan asked.

Daniel silently walked over to the frozen ocean and scooped some of the water up into his cupped hands. It remained frozen. He slowly spread his hands apart and the water separated into two parts. He turned back to the Midnighters and smiled in satisfaction.

"I don't get it," Melissa said. Daniel rolled his eyes.

"Water is H2O. You high school people should know that. See this?" he raised his right hand. "This is the O. And this," he raised his left. "Is the H. I can separate the molecules of things. Pretty cool, huh."

Jessica stared at the substances he held in his hands. She walked up to him and carefully pointed at the translucent ball he held in his right hand.

"So this is oxygen?" he nodded. She poked the ball and immediately it dissolved into nothing. She did the same to the ball in his left hand and it too had the same result.

"Guys..." she turned back to face Melissa and Jonathan. "Do you think...?"

"It might just work," Melissa breathed, a hint of desperation in her voice.

"Hey Daniel," Jonathan turned to the boy. "You up for a road trip?"


	5. Author's note

I'm really sorry about not updating. I've had a lot going on recently, and I decided that I would like to have at least three chapters done before I update again. That way I won't have to be frazzled trying to get everything updated.

Currently, I am almost finished with _What a Tangled Web We Weave... _As soon as I finish the next...two-ish chapters, I'll update.

With _Midnight's Gift_...It's really complicated to write, so I am working on it, but as I want it to be a really well written story it will probably be updated less frequently.

Honestly, I completely forgot about _Playing Cupid_. I realized that I hadn't finished it last night. I'm working on that. Next chapter is partially done.

_Operation: Canada_ is a little more complicated. My best friend and I are writing it together, but she's taking some really hard classes at school, so I hardly ever see her. Hopefully we'll be able to update again soon, but it all really depends on homework levels on her part.

I've decided that I'm taking _The Traveler's Anomaly_ off the site, for multiple reasons. I ran out of ideas, I don't have the time or motivation to finish it, and I just didn't really like it.

So everyone, just bear with me. I'm trying to balance school, homework, writing fanfiction, and writing my book all at the same time. And at the moment, fanfictions are not taking priority. I'll still update. It's possible that random one-shots will pop up from time to time, but I won't be starting any new stories until I finish the ones I'm writing now.

x3 Lyz


	6. Chapter 4

**Wow! I was so overwhelmed about the amount of reviews I've gotten on this story, wanting me to continue. I felt bad that I abandoned this, so I wrote a chapter for you guys. :D It might not be that great, since I honestly don't remember much about the book. (I'll definitely be rereading it before I try to write another chapter...unless I remember enough about the characters...) I couldn't quite remember how obnoxious Madeleine is, so for the sake of this story, she may be a little OOC. I just remember I kind of couldn't stand her. XD **

**Anyway, I will really try not to take so long to update again. But I make no promises. And I feel bad that this chapter is kind of short...The next one will be longer, I swear.  
**

**Enjoy, and review!**

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"Dessdemona!" the name rang through the house, bouncing off the cluttered items and rattling into Dess's brain. "Come up here, will you? And bring me my tea."

Dess sighed, pushing herself up from her position on the floor. Madeleine seemed to be recovering. She was becoming more and more like her cantankerous self every day. Dess supposed it was a good thing, that she was recovering, but some days she couldn't help but long for the times when Madeleine had been withdrawn and hollow.

"Coming Maddy," she called up the stairs, grabbing the teapot off the counter in the kitchen. She fixed a cup the way she knew the old woman liked it and took it carefully upstairs. "Here."

Madeleine took the cup and gingerly sipped from it. "Nicely made. I see that you finally got my preferences straight."

"Yes ma'am," Dess rolled her eyes.

"You have something you need to talk to me about?" Madeleine asked as she blew gently on her teacup.

Dess was beyond being taken aback by Maddy's ability to read her mind so thoroughly. It used to shock her. Now, it just irritated her.

"Yes, actually. It's kind of important."

"I know," Madeleine said in her infuriatingly calm voice.

Dess had to grind her teeth together to keep herself from yelling. "If you already know what I'm going to say, why are you making me say it?"

"Because if I can only know what you've already thought of to say," Madeleine said, as if this fact should be painfully obvious to Dess. "I would like to hear you explain thoroughly."

Dess sighed. "You remember my friend Rex, right?"

"Dessdemona, I'm old, not senile," Maddy reproached her. Dess fought the strong urge to roll her eyes. "Fine." She took a deep breath to calm herself. "Rex is still part darkling, which can't really be that big of a help to us Midnighters. I mean, we have a whole world to explore! How can we do that if…well…you know…we had a Seer who could function."

"You're asking me to attempt to fix your Rex, then?" Madeleine's face hardened. "You know as well as I do that I won't do that."

"I was hoping you would change your mind," Dess admitted.

"I'm sorry," Madeleine apologized frostily, "It simply can't be done. I'm not about to risk my sanity for this boy. Again."

Anger flared up in Dess's chest. How could Madeleine be so selfish?! Rex's humanity wasn't the only thing at stake here. The Midnighters had no idea what else was out there. It seemed like all the darklings had vanished when Jessica had done her thing with the lightning, but that was only true for Bixby. They really had no idea if that was a fact everywhere else. Madeleine's refusal to help could be detrimental in the long run.

"Alright then," Dess said, her voice emotionless and flat. "I'm going to go see Rex. I may not see you tomorrow."

And with those words, she got up and climbed back down the stairs. When she was sure Madeleine couldn't see her, she snuck a look back at the old woman. Maddy's face was a blank mask as she took another sip of her tea. Her eyes held no clue as to what she was thinking. And for the time being, Dess was glad of the silence.


	7. Chapter 5

**Yay! I updated within a month this time! Go me!**

**So now, the plot thickens. You get a little knowledge of my plans here. It's still really short though. -frowns-  
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**I found the outline I wrote for this story. Yay for having a direction for the story to go again!  
**

**Enjoy, and review!**

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His head pounded. His eyes ached. All he wanted to do was stop reading. But he was _so close_. If he could just find that missing page…

"Rex?" Beth's tentative voice lulled him out of his thoughts. "Did you find anything yet?"

Rex sighed, though because of his tension, the air came out sounding like a growl. Beth flinched, wondering if she had accidentally provoked him again.

Rex realized how he must have sounded and moved to turn towards the girl. "I, ah," he accidentally knocked over a tower of paper filled boxes as he turned. They went crashing to the floor, littering the surface with hundreds of ancient writings. "Crap," he muttered. "Help me pick these up, will you?"

Beth moved towards the mess and began collecting papers. Rex knelt next to her, ignoring the ache in his head as he scanned over the pages he picked up.

"Do you want me to put these back in the-" Rex cut Beth off midsentence. He was holding a small leather covered book filled with yellowing pages.

"Wait," he murmured, reading carefully. Beth looked at him funny, but sat on the floor beside him and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

It was nearly an hour before he resurfaced. Beth had sat in an agitated silence the entire time. She had learned after spending so much time with Rex that rushing him was a bad idea. She was also used to how when he would start to read, he would sit stone still. This was why, when he finally stirred, it startled her and she nearly fell over.

"Beth," the excitement was barely concealed in his voice. "I think I've found something."

"Something, like, something interesting?" Beth asked nervously. "Or something…Jessica related."

Rex grinned. Beth had to keep herself from flinching. No matter how good at heart Rex may have been, he was still half monster and his smiles still had something threatening lurking behind them.

"Jessica related," his voice broke through Beth's thoughts.

"Really?" she asked, excitedly. Rex nodded, still grinning his eerie smile.

"Can we do it? Can we get Jess back?" hope bubbled up in her chest for the first time in almost a year.

A shadow passed through Rex's eyes. "Yes. But we're going to need someone's help. And I am positive that she won't want to help."

"Why not?" Beth cocked her head to the side in confusion.

"Because," Rex sighed. "The process is…complicated. We'll need two mindcasters-"

"But we have that," Beth interrupted. "If Melissa comes back, then we have two mindcasters."

"I know," Rex replied patiently. "But I don't think even Melissa will want to do this. She isn't the one we need anyway."

"Of _course _Melissa would want to help. She's Jess's friend too!" Beth protested.

"I really don't think that Jessica would want us to save her," Rex shook his head. "At least not this way. There's too much at stake."

"I don't understand," Beth grumbled. "Are we getting my sister back or not?"

"We're going to try," Rex said, getting frustrated. "But Beth, you have to understand. This is complicated."

"Complicated how?" Beth argued. "This is my _big sister _that we're talking about here!"

Rex threw up his hands in annoyance. "It's a switch, Beth!" he practically yelled. "A _switch_. We can't have one without losing another, ok? The only way to get Jessica back is to replace her in the blue time with someone else!" When he finished, he was breathing hard. He slumped into a chair and laid his head down in his arms.

Frightened and shocked, Beth had nothing to say in response.


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